We Lost the Wars We Thought We Won

How the Cold War and the GWOT showed us who we are

Over the course of my lifetime, one ideological conflict has come to a close, and another continues to shamble along like a zombie despite the fact that it has already been lost. The former is the Cold War, and the latter is the Global War on Terror (or GWOT, as us former military-types often refer to it as).

We’ve been told that communism was defeated when the Soviet Union fell and the Berlin Wall came down. I was young when both of these things happened, but the surrounding narrative was always that the twin powers of liberal democracy and capitalism were on their way to sweeping the globe and ushering in a new utopia. Francis Fukayama even wrote The End of History, taking a victory lap on behalf of these ideologies and claiming them to be the final develpomental stage of humanity. We did it, folks! We ended history.

At the conclusion of the Cold War, the major powers of communism had either gone away (the Soviet Union) or absorbed enough capitalist tendencies to no longer be truly communist (China). The philosphy of communism — as well as its more democratic cousin socialism — continued, but the world was no longer a bipolar power competition economically or philosophically. The era of the United States as a monopolar power was about to begin. This will eventually lead to how we lost the second ideologial war of my lifetime, but first we need to look at what happened in the aftermath. War takes its toll on both sides. What price did the US pay to “win” the Cold War?

We’ve found out in the years since that none of the promises ended up coming true. Liberal democracies have not taken hold in countries around the world. In fact, I would argue the opposite. Authoritarianism has continued to be a problem as more countries around the world let fear take over their politics. Capitalism has proven to be more resilient, unfortunately, and may yet be the force behind our own destruction. But none of that reality stopped people from thinking it was true. As a result, one of the scars of “winning” the Cold War was the absolute belief that unfettered market capitalism was the best economic philosophy. Complete faith was put in the idea that supply-side (i.e. - trickle down) economics was the way to ensure prosperity for everyone. Cut taxes for the rich and they will create jobs. (In reality, they put their money into AI research so they can stop paying us at all. But that’s for another day…) The Cold War cemented into our psyche that the United States should continue to play capitalism on hard mode.

America’s investment into the Global War on Terror is much fresher in our collective memory. I was on active duty on 9/11, and I was a reservist during some of the peak GWOT periods in the early teens. For my own part, I will admit that I put my own individual feelings about many issues of the day aside, particularly on active duty. “It doesn’t matter how I feel; I have to do my job.” Eventually those rifts contributed to what eventually made me leave the miltary. That aside, the GWOT produced one thing more than any other: nationalism. Do you remember the NFL making such a big deal out of the national anthem or military flyovers before 9/11? They really didn’t.

With the global war on terror, extreme patriotism had found root in the collective American consciousness. And patriotism can easily metastacize into nationalism if left unchecked. Which is exactly what happened. A certain type of jingoism became acceptable American discourse. The military might of the United States was to be complete and unquestioned, as well as being the solution to every geopolitical problem around the world. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

With a resurgent nationalism added to the historical memory of white people (i.e. - white men) being the seat of power in America, racial remarks directed at Muslims and Arabic peoples were common and accepted. From here, it’s an easy pivot to make the “other” out of another marginalized group. Perhaps immigrants might make a tempting target? It doesn’t really matter who the source of the problem is, as long as it isn’t “us.” As long as the people that have tradionally been in power can be convinced they’ve been marginalized and embarassed, and that all this is someone else’s fault, it saves them from intospection. The lasting scar of the War on Terror is a nationalism which is ready to be weaponized against the American people.

Now the interests of capital have more openly aligned themselves with the interest of populist authoritarians, as is natural for both of them. We have billionares with direct access to some of the more powerful political figures on the planet advocating for ghoulish policies that will cause great amounts of suffering while they control more and more of our media. This was not what the end of history was supposed to look like. Despite having “won” the Cold War and “winning” the GWOT, America has been exposed through both of these conflicts. The twin powers of expolitative captialism and white nationalism, always present since the founding of our country, have taken over the majority of our lives. Neither are sustainable, and either would lead to the American experiment coming to an end. Good thing we have both of them.